


All Day Permanent Red

by JeanLuciferGohard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017) ×, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Community: Kylux Cantina, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Other, Sleep Deprivation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, just a whole lotta unhealthy tbh, kylo ren's wikipedia search history, ren was demoted to admin 2 because hux is petty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 06:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14785527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/pseuds/JeanLuciferGohard
Summary: After Major Damage to their flagship, a hyperspace jump strands the remains of the First Order light years off-|course, Hux and Ren are forced planetside in search of parts for the needed repairs.Things don't go as planned.(For Kylux Cantina week 49, “medical scare”| "He goes to see Hux almost compulsively, the way he’d pick at a scab. The way Hux is nearly always smoking these days. It’s just that Hux still hasn’t quite broken himself of the old instinct to snap at Ren’s fingers, and nobody else has to guts to try."|





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Christopher Logue's "All Day Permanent Red", which recounts several chunks of battle scenes from the "Odyssey" in modern verse, which includes the description of a fatal arrow-wound as "a hole the lize of a lipstick stube", and which was a major jumping off point for this fic.

>>Filename: foid.10.3109/2F07420529209064511

>>User:Admin2_KR

>>Accessed:

>>Under _ : Chronobiology, Human Biology, Staffing _

 

**_Official First Order reference material begins below:_ **

_ >>Executive Summary: More than 100 human biological variables, affecting both physical and psychological fitness for  duty, exhibit intrinsic periodicity falling within a period of 24.1-24.2 Standard Core Hours. This is complicated, however, by heterogenous planetary orbital periods, in that beyond the Core Planets, day-night cycles may far exceed or fall short of such a period, placing ordinary circadian body rhythms at odds with actual sleep-wake cycles. FO personnel recruited in designated regions (see Fig 1), as well as those assigned to long-periods of Deep Space travel  at both light- and sub-light speeds are at greater risk of Spontaneous Internal Desynchrony, i.e. sleep-wake cycles at odds with circadian body rhythms,negatively impacting performance. SID has been observed to provoke sleep-wake cycles of highly variable length; 8 hour cycles have been reported, as have cycles exceeding 60 standard hours. Current observed maximum cycle-length: 68 hours. Absolute limits of disorder not known. Recommendations for maintenance of shipboard conditions and staffing rotations follow. _

_ >>ERR: FILE_LOCKED _

_ >>INPUT CLEARANCE TO CONTINUE _

_ >>______| _

* * *

 

_ [Hour 66] _

The First Order maintains an extensive reference catalogue on chronobiology, all of which is to say that the sun never rises onboard a  _ Resurgent _ -class Star Destroyer, and they keep the lights running all the time, so the best you can hope for is that you manage to force your body to forget wherever the hell you used to be from, and learn go without any real difference between ‘day’ and ‘night’. There isn’t one, only on- or off-duty, Alpha/Beta/Delta shift.

Delta Shift, lights at 60%.

Hux’s lights are always at 60%, and Ren has yet to see him sleep. Has yet to see if he even has a  _ bed _ ; no matter what hideous, insomniac hour he arrives at, Hux (hideous, insomniac) is always awake, dressed, freshly on- or off-duty.

He goes to see Hux almost compulsively, the way he’d pick at a scab. The way Hux is nearly always smoking these days. It’s just that Hux still hasn’t quite broken himself of the old instinct to snap at Ren’s fingers, and nobody else has to guts to try.

So he goes to see Hux; there’s no shortage of pretexts they push at each other’s bruises until something snaps and they end up like this: Ren, fucking the threadcount of the little carpet Hux keeps in his quarters into his knees with his jodhpurs around his thighs and his boots still on because Hux’s blue, Brutalist excuse for a sofa is too narrow for the task, and Hux spitting and snarling,  coming with his teeth bared, scrabbling at the cushions he can  _ just _  reach, but which are too thin and too hard to gain any real purchase on.

“I really did think you’d be better at this, considering.” He murmurs, pulling his hands away from Hux’s hips (too thin and too hard to gain any real purchase on). His cowl is somewhere in the far corner of the room, his shirt is discarded somewhere in the loose vicinity of Hux’s desk, and Ren makes no move for either one of them, instead settling himself on the floor with his head tipped back against the couch, because the floor is genuinely the more comfortable of the two. What’s better is that Hux wants so badly to be threatening, he flushes nearly purple at the sight of Ren daring to make himself comfortable in  _ his _  rooms. He stretches languidly, rubbing his hand over his chest because it makes Hux think loudly of carving open his scar all over again.

Hux sniffs, far too archly than he has any right to, for a man bleeding sluggishly from the mouth with haphazard smears of come on his belly.

“It’s very limited tactic, actually.”

There’s a refresher adjoining Hux’s room, he knows this intellectually, but he’s never seen Hux use it, not even after these...episodes. He seems to always have something to hand, scrubs Ren off his stomach with a miscellaneous rag clenched in his gloved fist. Hux shows his belly, like a good dog, and Ren is growing increasingly familiar with several inches of his back, but the sudden thought of seeing his hands feels horrifyingly intimitate. Hux pulls himself up gingerly, lips pressed together, and tosses it away down the incinerator chute.

Ren snorts. “Of course, just having people assassinated is a  _ much _  safer bet, isn’t it? Or Blackmailing them into early retirement in Hutt Space.”

“No sense sleeping with your commanding officer if they’ve got nowhere to promote you to.” Hux murmurs flatly, suddenly swaying. He catches himself on the edge of his hideous sofa, eyes squeezed shut, shaking his head like a dog.  

“Tired, General?” Looking up from the floor, Ren can see the soft underside of his chin. He looks hurriedly away, his own throat suddenly tight.

“Of course not, Supreme Leader.”

When he ventures a second look, Hux is standing, brushing back his hair with his palm, but his eyes look more bloodshot than usual.

“How long have you been awake?”

Hux looks utterly baffled, the most unguarded expression he’s ever seen from the man.

“Why?”

* * *

 

>>Filename: foid.10.4517/9T164243883577S4999

>>User:Admin2_KR

>>Accessed:

>>Under _ : Navigation _

**_Official First Order reference material begins below_ **

_ >> Executive summary: Ground-based chrono-devices require extensive communication channels to synchronize ship’s time across consolidated FO planets/territories (Financial figures for such communications available in Appendix C) and are thus unsuitable for coordination of fleet movements in Deep Space, and such communications, furthermore, cannot reach FO craft in hyperspace. Ship time, therefore, is to be set according to an onboard Mercury-ion chrono device, standardized across all FO craft; specifications follow _

**_[REDACTED]_ **

_ Following the above specifications, it is expected that such a device should incur no more than 1 microsecond of error in 10 standard  years of operations, making it ideal for the synchronization of time-sensitive fleet maneuvers. _

* * *

 

[Hour 27]

There’s little enough for anybody to do  _ during _  a hyperspace jump, so Ren is surveying Hux surveying the bridge crew, surveying their little screens at their neatly arrayed, identical workstations.

The stars blur and stretch around them, jarring back into place with sickening  _ snap _ .

They’re the wrong stars, dotting the empty space where Dathomir isn’t.

They are the  _ wrong _  stars, and it’s just one more thing gone  _ wrong _ , except that Uncle Lu-- _ Skywalker  _ dead, Han Solo is dead, Snoke is dead,  Ben Solo is dead and it should have been enough to make it  _ right _  and so clearly the stars have been made wrong on purpose, and this is all Hux’s doing, somehow. His hand twitches, reaching out to throttle whatever solace he can out of throwing Hux into a panel array, but Hux is gone, somehow crossing the length of the bridge to crane over a twitchy-looking navigations officer with a handful of dark moles spattered across her face in the time it takes Ren to notice he’s left. And by then he’s too far away for the attempt to look anything but absurd.

“I don’t know, sir, the jump sequence was set to end at 0945:47 ship’s time, readouts show that it did, but we’re nowhere near where we should-”  She gestures nervously at display glowing in front of her, shrinking back from Hux looming over her shoulder. Hux lacks the bulk to loom properly; his technique involves a sudden insinuation of his person into space, like a knife in the ribs, to compensate.

“Yes, I can see that, Petty Officer.” He snaps drawls, “Where  _ are _  we?”

Her hair is thick, and dark, pulled tightly back like a good little officer.

_ How transparent of you, General. _

“Bheriz Sector, sir. The Eadu system.”

“Eadu?”  The navigations array casts Hux is sickly green light as he frowns. “Unamo. Contact the remainder of the fleet, all hands. Mitaka, lock the ship down.  _ Nothing _  launches without my express authorization.I want a full diagnostic of all ship systems  _ now. _ ”

Ren looms  _ properly _ , almost geologically massive in scale, throwing a heavy shadow over the navigations array, still scrolling furiously. Hux pales. “At your discretion, of course, Supreme Leader.”

“General. A word.”

Hux clicks a half-step behind him into the hallway, flattening himself to the wall almost at the exact same time that Ren whirls to pin him there with an arm barred across his throat.

“What in the Sith hells just  _ happened?” _

* * *

 

>>Filename: foid.10.3109/9R9956Y287802460145

>>User:Admin2_KR

>>Accessed:

>>Under _ : Navigation, Imperial Holdings _

 

**_Official First Order reference material begins below:_ **

_ >>Executive Summary: Eadu (Eadu System, Bheriz Sector, Outer Rim, Coordinate U-10) compromises both the planet itself and its one known moon. Eadu proper shows highly unstable atmospheric conditions; storms and cloud-cover pose serious flight and communications-delay risks. Est. pop of 2.5 million, clustered mainly in the southern hemisphere. Formerly an Imperial holding under  _ **_[REDACTED]_ ** _ , later ceded as part of the  _ **_[REDACTED]_ ** _. Eadu, in official Imperial records, was designated by the Empire for research and chemical processing, however. _

**_[REDACTED]_ **

_ >>ERR: FILE_LOCKED _

_ >>INPUT CLEARANCE TO CONTINUE _

_ >>______| _

* * *

 

[Hour 34]

His data-pad dangles limply from his hand, abandoned, screen shattered, and Ren thinks  ** _fuck_** _this, fuck Eadu, fuck Hux most of all._ He’s yet to be convinced this wasn’t Hux’s fault, somehow, even after half a week of lurking just inside the man’s head. There is a sharp, bright line in Hux’s mind delineating the place where his body  _stops_ , sealed off like an airlock from what Hux thinks of as himself. He can barely feel his hands even as they blister under the water steaming in his ‘fresher’s sink, water which washes down faintly pink. Hux stands nude in front of his clouded mirror, not looking, which mercifully, means that Kylo isn’t looking either. It takes...considerably more finesse than usual to crouch in the back of Hux’s mind without his noticing,but finesse was never his strong suit, and things are starting to bleed through.

(Hux’s mouth, seeping wetly into the filter of his cigarra.)

He cannot,  _cannot_  look at Hux’s  hands, but he can feel them trembling as Hux lights it. This was supposed to about finding some _fucking answers,_  but all he’s learned so far is that Hux’s day is roughly three times as long as a ship’s day, and of this, Hux has been awake for most of it, or 54.4 ship’s hours (as Hux calculates it). Hux is  _always_  calculating, inspecting his body for damage like he’s appraising a droid. Bruising, pulpy and purpled-raw like some exotic fruit smears down one side of his neck and  across his right shoulder, which Hux has been trying to coax Ren into favouring for these things; he shoots left-handed. He pokes at it mercilessly, and half a ship’s length away, Ren hisses through his teeth.

There is only a thin, atrophied sliver of Hux’s mind still connected to his body, and it was the simplest place to hide.

_ Hux’s whole  _ **_body_ ** _  is a thin, atrophied sliver _ , he thinks, and half a ship’s length away, Ren starts when Hux snorts, huffing out a thin plume of smoke.

“That’s a new voice.” Hux mutters, smearing bacta into his shoulder with the heel of his ( _ don’t look _ ) hand. “Though I suppose it was inevitable they’d end up sounding like  _ him _  eventually.” It flashes briefly through Hux’s mind that this shouldn’t be happening so soon, that the onset of auditory phenomena  _ should _  be 8 ship days (3 Hux days), no sleep. Hux’s concern is a soft spot; Ren bites down.

(Hux’s cigarra is burning down too fast; Ren’s fingers twinge inside his gloves.)

Hux keeps antipsychotics in amongst his stash of stimulant injections, syringes and medtabs all lined up in a durasteel case like teeth in a skull.

_ That won’t stop this _  he pushes into Hux’s thoughts.

“Yes,” Hux hisses to his mirror, “it will”. He swallows the pills dry.

Hux is going somewhere, abruptly, pulled together and sweeping down the corridors of the  _ Supremacy _ , and Ren realizes all too late that Hux is coming to report to  _ him _ . He hurriedly shoves the ruined data pad under a cushion.

He races to untangle himself from Hux’s thoughts, too late, and for a nauseating instant, Ren is looking at himself looking at Hux looking at him before he scrambles back into his own skull. Since Crait, Hux’s expression is even more pinched than usual in his ridgid parade-rest.

“Diagnostics are ongoing, but we have confirmed that the ship’s DSAC was compromised.”

He looks at Hux blankly, who frowns. “The ship’s chrono, it--Our warpdrive is miscalibrated as result,  and the jump sequence ended...prematurely. We estimate roughly a third of the fleet reached Dathomir, but we have no contact still from the  _ Reckoner, Elefsis,  _ or  _ Havemercy.  _ And your army is demanding to know what’s to be done about duty rotations.”

“ _ My _  army?”

Hux sniffs. “Well it’s not  _ mine _ , is it? You do make a point of reminding me.” His mouth thins.  “Your orders, Supreme Leader?”

“My orders are that you  _ fix this _ , General.” He doesn’t even need the Force to feel the disdain rolling off of Hux in waves. Hux, who doesn’t think he knows what he’s doing. Hux, who isn’t rising to the bait the way Ren needs him to, to pull the answer out of him so neatly that Hux will never know he doesn’t know what he’s doing. The data pad, at least, is well out of his line of sight. He whirls on Hux, towering, hurling the words at him like rocks at a stray “Or are you  _ inadequate _  to the task? Shall I have you replaced?”

Most people, faced with the invasion of their thoughts, are helpless, bleeding out their secrets like gutted animals. The ones who know how to guard themselves tend to think of empty deserts, blasted heath. They think of wall, or mazes, or yesterday’s breakfast. Hux thinks of the sound of rain, and somewhere behind the endless, wet drumming, Hux snarls  _ how _ , which means that--

Hux doesn’t know how to fix this.

He feels...oddly hollow, confronted with the fact. Hux knows everything, has planned for everything, except he hasn’t, and now they’re--

And how  _ dare _ , how  _ fucking dare _  Hux come to fling problems at him and gloat when he doesn’t know what to do when Hux himself doesn’t even--

His thoughts reel. But. But. There are labs on Eadu, Old Imperial labs. Weapons labs. Even if they’d been stripped bare, which they undoubtedly have been, by now, they weren’t stripped by a Solo. There’ll be  _ something _  they missed, or something they hid instead of taking, and Ben Solo was always good at finding things like that, and it will be enough. It has to be enough. He turns his back to Hux, lifts his chin haughtily.

“We will find what we need on Eadu. I have foreseen it.”

Hux is biting his tongue, thinking of rain, thinking that they can only send a single craft, there’s no way to coordinate multiple launches until the repairs are complete…

But he says “At your command, Supreme Leader.” He turns to go, and Ren freezes him in his tracks, smiling nastily where Hux can’t see.

“And, General? You will accompany me.”

* * *

 

>>Filename: foid.10.TV0U/MSS0009361B8819808

>>User:Admin2_KR

>>Accessed:

>>Under _ : Human Biology _

 

**_Official First Order reference material begins below:_ **

_ >>Executive Summary: Notable changes in human physiological systems occur after prolonged Deep Space Flight and shipboard artificial gravity, especially in crew from the listed sectors (See Fig. 9), where planetside gravity is observed to be greater than the statistical average maintain on FO craft. These changes may include loss of bone tissue (up to 1.5% per month, concentrated in the spine, hip and femur), loss of blood and fluid volume (up to 22%, leading to orthostatic hypotension upon return to higher-gravity environments), changes to the retina and other visual phenomena, loss of muscle mass, etc. Recommendations for preemptive physical conditioning follow. _

_ [HOUR 45] _

Hux hates being in atmo, the feeling of being (on average) 7.65 times heavier than he should, acutely aware of gravity  _ pulling  _ on him, of his growing lightheadedness and shaking limbs . It feels a little like drowning.

The rain does nothing to dispel the similarity.

Even inside what’s left of the labs, the air is thick and clammy, and his clothes are still soaked through. Ren seems to be struggling even more, fighting the weight of his sodden cloak and cowl as he stalks around the empty room, accompanied by a series of wet, muffled  _ slaps _ . Two hours, and nothing so far, and the four troopers with them are nowhere to be found, and aren’t reporting back, which could just be atmospheric interference jamming the comms, or--

Hux pulls up short, inches away from collision with Ren, who stands frozen, hunched over a small, blinking light. He peers around his elbow for a closer look.

“Incoming transmission.” Hux thumbs a switch to let it through: a man’s voice, thin and panicked between bursts of static.

_ “This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone ...Mayday, Mayday...we are under attack...main drive is gone . . .turret number one not responding...Mayday . . . losing cabin pressure fast, _ _   
_ _ calling anyone . . . please help . . .This is Free Trader Beowulf . . .Mayday . . .” _

“Goodspeed, Free Trader.” Hux snorts, flicking the switch off again.

Ren brings his fist down on the console, echoing too-loud in the dim carcass of the lab, face tight with rage as he glares.“How do they know we’re here?” he snarls.

“They don’t. Nobody does.” Hux snaps back. “Free Trading Ship  _ Beowulf _   was shot down by the  _ Minotaur _  more than ten years ago, over Iridonia, attempting to smuggle munitions out of First Order controlled territories.” Ren regards him suspiciously. “I was  _ there _ . It would’ve taken years for the call come out this far, but he  _ was _  calling all channels.” He waves a hand vaguely upward, “It’s the rain. Atmospheric Interference.”

Hux checks his comm again. Nothing.

Atmospheric Interference. Must Be.

There is something  _ profoundly _  bizarre about watching Kylo Ren, sopping wet, pounding on wall panels, seemingly at random, like a common smuggler. It makes  _ sense, _  considering, but still. Ben Solo is  _ dead _ , or so Ren keeps insisting. It’s even stranger when a significant majority of them pop open, yielding up small caches of credits, keepsakes. Half a bottle of something which claims to be Corellian whiskey, which he sniffs and discards. A  _ full _  bottle of what claims of to be Cantonican cloud-gin, which he tucks into a pocket.

“I was under the impression we were here for parts.” Ren cranes over his shoulder to look at him, face unreadable in the gloom “Supreme Leader” he adds.

“We  _ are _ . I just need to…” Ren stills, one hand outstretched and trembling slightly in response to....something. Mystical resonances, or something equally ridiculous. “There. Ahead.”

He sweeps down a corridor, wet robes still dragging behind him, coming to an abrupt halt before a locked door.

“What?”

“There’s something…”

“Yes, you said. Was that not the point?” Hux drawls archly, eyebrows raised.

The fizzling crackle of Ren’s saber as he carves through the door, as ever, fails to impress.

The room on the other side is dark, just like all the other rooms before it.

Unlike all the other rooms before it, there’s a display taking up most of the far wall, blinking down in red towards zero.

Ren starts towards it triumphantly, abandoning his earlier unease.

Hux stares.

“You want us to repair a chrono that runs through the entire ship, one of its most  _ vital _  components, with” he sputters “with parts scavenged off a  _ reagent timer?” _

Ren’s face looms red-lit and sullen in the gloom as he works, already slashing open the wall.

“Would it work?”

“It...might.” Hux concedes grudgingly.

And everything is going so well,  _ shockingly _  well, that Hux’s prickly disdain barely registers as he works, excising the timer’s core from its housing like a pit from stonefruit, right up until:

his hand brushes something fleshy and slick behind it, and Ren pulls his hand out covered in a thick, glutinous slime and two more hands follow his, or rather, what  _ looks _  like two hands joined at the wrists with a drooling, chittering snarl of a mouth between them, and it launches itself from the newly-opened wall, latching firmly onto his shoulder and Ren  _ wrenches  _  it off, and his saber flies up and through it, bisecting the  _ thing _  as he pants.

And he looks down to see, while the hand-halves twitch, dying in the dirt, sizzling, to see a hole, slowly oozing blood, exactly the size and shape of a tube of lipstick Ben used to steal from his mother, chewed into his chest, and a pallid, maggoty tail disappearing into it. Into  _ him. _

He looks up to see Hux’s face, starkly, nakedly terrified.

He blacks out.

* * *

 

>>User:Admin2_KR

>> _ find “Xenomorph XX121” /C: all_files _

_ >>no results found _

* * *

_ [HOUR 56] _

They’re not in a cave. A distant, hysterical part of him thinks it would be better if they  _ were _  in a cave, aesthetically speaking. Give it the proper atmosphere. But they aren’t in a cave, they’re just outside of a standard-issue First Order all-weather shelter, of whose construction (Hux’s work, cursing and slicked with mud) he is only vaguely aware.

There is rain on his face, somewhere else where Hux is shoring up his shelter, snarling. Something about labs converted after the first Death Star blew, biological warfare experiments of dubious ethicality. Rumours.

The only thing he  _ knows _ , clearer even the pain is that it, the hole, it really is the exact same size as that lipstick, the one Ben could never keep his hands off.

It (the lipstick) was a rich, matte red.

It (the hole) is a glossy, slick black.

It (the part of Kylo that still knows things) is suddenly struck with the realization that he doesn’t want to die like this.

And then Hux slaps him across the face.

“Get the fuck out of my head, Ren, I don’t give a shit what you  _ want.  _ That shuttle takes two to pilot, and I’m leaving.”

Hux shoves his palm down,  _ hard _ , grinding glove-leather against the hole in Ren’s chest, and his vision goes white, blood bubbling up over his mouth with a harsh wheeze. Hux hums.

“Mm. Not too far in yet. Hold it there.”

Ren stares, blankly, mouth bloody, lipstick-red. Hux slaps him again.

“With the  _ Force, _  you [invective]. Hold it where it is, before it chews out the other side.”

It hurts, more than anything has ever hurt, and there are, there  _ must _  be better ways of doing this, without having Hux bent over him, all wet, red hair and bared teeth, one knee planted on either side of his chest, holding him down with one cold, rain-slicked hand. Cleaner, he amends. Safer. This way is enough like sex that it’s...perversely comforting. Familiar, in a way that has him rolling up onto his elbows without any conscious thought at all, ready to drag Hux down.

The strain of it all is so great, he barely notices Hux stripping off his gloves.

“Hold still.” Hux hisses, shoving him back down into the mud.

“Your bedside manner needs work.”

“My mistake.” He drawls, and his dagger is only just visible, a glint in the rain. “‘Relax, sir.” Hux parrots, bringing the knife down, “This won’t hurt a bit’”

It doesn’t. Hux’s dagger is so thin and so sharp Ren can barely feel the cut. It is, he realizes, the first time he’s seen Hux’s hands.

“This will.” And Ren wheezes in sudden agony as Hux  _ shoves _  his fingers into the wound, twisting and scissoring it open with his hand. The thing inside him writhes in outrage, and Hux isn’t stopping, curling his fingers with a hideous, bloody  _ sucking _  noise, red up to his knuckles. The insides of his wrists are a waxy corpse-lavender. There is a faint scar on the pad of his trigger finger, which Hux traces with the edge of his thumbnail, scraping away a clot of blood.

His hips roll back by increments, and Kylo wants to hiss that of  _ course _  he’d be like this, of  _ course _  this is what does it for you, but Hux is only reaching for his blaster. Hux is only shifting back to thumb off the safety switch. Hux is only holding him down in the mud with his thin, cold hand while he works the muzzle of his blaster into the sucking lipstick-sized hole in Kylo’s chest.

He has no control over his body. Kylo retches, and whines, high in his throat and scrabbles at Hux’s forearm with the hand that isn’t clawing at the ground, he sobs and heaves in the rain and holds the thing inside him in range.

“Hold.  _ Still.” _  Hux’s jaw trembles.

His finger on the trigger does not.

Then everything is redness and light, and the taste of Hux’s hand shoved against his teeth stop him from screaming, leather and regret and the abhorrently human taste of Hux’s skin.

He wishes Hux had kept the gloves on.

* * *

 

>>User:Admin2_KR

>> _ ERR: request timed out _

_ >>Re-input query to continue _

* * *

 

_ [HOUR 0] _

Delta Shift, lights at 60%.

Hux’s lights are always at 60%, and Ren has yet to see him sleep, not even on Eadu, when he woke up in the hazard-yellow of the emergency light behind his head and found Hux, hovering like a ghost over him, methodically changing the dressing on his wound, and Hux had murmured to him that he’d saved Ren’s life twice now, and there were systems, more than one, where that meant Ren’s life would be his, legally, and he’d snarled back that Hux wouldn’t know what to do with it if it did, and then they both said nothing, and Hux never did fall asleep, just checked the comms and cleaned his knife all night long.

They’ve not spoken since, but the bacta-scented, lipstick-sized scar on his chest twinges when he passes Hux in the halls, and there is a lipstick-sized  _ something _  stretched between them, born in the blood and mud and rain 78 Standard Core Hours ago.

He pushes his knuckles into the scar and scratches it open again, and again, compulsively, the way he used to visit Hux, and vows to carve out whatever  _ it _  is.

There’s little enough for anybody to do  _ during _  a hyperspace jump, so Ren is holed up in his quarters, pointedly  _ not _  surveying Hux surveying the bridge crew, surveying their little screens at their neatly arrayed, identical workstations. But even then, he can  _ see _  it, the crew, washed-out by the readout-lights, and Hux’s hands, clenched tight and straining behind his back.

Outside, the stars around them blur and stretch into white.


	2. Bibliography

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  2. Wever R. (1979) The Circadian System of Man: Results of Experiments under Temporal Isolation. New York: Springer-Verlag. 
  3. Czeisler, CA; Duffy, JF; Shanahan, TL; Brown, EN; Mitchell, JF; Rimmer, DW; Ronda, JM; Silva, EJ; Allan, JS; et al. (1999). "Stability, precision, and near-24-hour period of the human circadian pacemaker". Science. 284 (5423)
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**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 2 contains a bibliography for the FO reference data


End file.
